Balance Shared

Laura Rowe comes back to discuss ancestral medicine and systemic racism. We believe we have a responsibility to change the system and we discuss pieces of this change.

Laura and I discuss systemic racism as two white-presenting cis-gendered women. We see a space where we can be quiet, where we can learn, and we pick apart different places where we can elevate and change our society. 

“What hurts one of us hurts all of us.”

What’s the ‘right’ question? “How can we help you?”

Five steps to healing ancestral wounds:

1. Older generations let go. Younger generations tell us what they see.
2. Stop talking and listen. 
3. Investigate your bias. 
4. Heal.
5. Speak out and use your power.

• See Laura on the web: http://thevitalspirit.net/. 
• Laura’s piece on ancestral healing: https://thevitalspirit.net/2014/09/22/ancestral-healing-emotional-inheritance/. 
• Laura’s grounding and clearing meditation tools: https://thevitalspirit.net/the-tools/. 
• Laura’s first episode where we discuss what an empath is, season 1
• Laura’s second episode where we discuss the shadow side of the law of attraction, season 2 
• Caliban and the Witch 
• Your Grandmother’s Hands
• George Floyd Blog Post 
• Vanessa Couto’s website and podcast episodes in season one and season two. 

For more information about Michelle, Balance Shared, events, and projects, please visit www.michellelasley.com. 

Beltaine, the third fertility festival, and the Sabbat that ends the Time of Dawning and welcomes the Time of Light. Let's make an intentional change this Beltaine.

Let’s make an intentional change this Beltaine. In this episode, I reflect on what Beltaine has meant and then I invite us to consider what it can mean for us as we move towards a future with changing climates.

I did not review the story of the God and the Goddess, but for you, dear reader/listener, this is the time where the Maiden becomes Mother, and the god grows. You can see these changes in our seasons as well, where we are in spring fever, planting our gardens or watching nature bloom and grow up around us. Blossoms are shedding and becoming leaves, summer is rapidly approaching. We are aging in our year.

A note on climate change. In this episode, I reflect on how fire season has started earlier than before. Our fire seasons have extended beyond just California and now last nearly the entire summer. Communities are in danger. Our ecosystems are in danger. It is up to us to co-create a future that works for all of us. So, this Beltaine, in this last fertility festival, let us work towards bringing seeds and new ideas of how we can co-create a future that will work for all of us.

Learish, Jessica. “What Is A Maypole? A History Of The Fertility Rite.” Bustle, May 1, 2016. https://www.bustle.com/articles/157383-what-is-a-maypole-and-how-is-it-used-a-brief-history-of-this-pagan-fertility.

Starhawk, Diane Baker, and Anne Hill. Circle Round: Raising Children in Goddess Traditions. New York, NY: Bantam Books, 1998.

Wigington, Patti. “A Brief History of the Maypole Dance.” Learn Religions, June 25, 2019. https://www.learnreligions.com/history-of-the-maypole-2561629.

For more information about Michelle, Balance Shared, events, and projects, please visit www.michellelasley.com. 

Suzanne Carpenter shares her story of overcoming the shame monster of emotional eating, and now she teaches you to do the same thing.

Michigan State University graduate, Suzanne Carpenter, joined me so we could discuss food. Suzanne shares her story of emotional eating and with an eating disorder, through her moment of change, and now on the other side where she teaches people how to have a healthy relationship with the food on their plate.

Suzanne shares snippets of how “outrunning the fork” doesn’t usually work, and it’s not a sustainable strategy. She breaks down that exercise is not weight loss, rather a key to health living. But, what we really need? We need to eat in the proportions that work for us.

• You have to want to change
• Understand protein, fat, and fiber
• Understand your pattern of eating
• Understand the difference between physical hunger and emotional hunger
• Drink 3L of water per day
• Today is a great day to start

Visit Sur at her website or her Facebook Group. On her website, you’ll find access to her SOS text messages, her fiber list, and so much more.

For more information about Michelle, Balance Shared, events, and projects, please visit www.michellelasley.com. 

Introduction to Episode

La-Dana Manhertz will make stress work for you. In this episode we dial into how stress affects the body AND how to get your control back.

Podcast Episode Summary

La-Dana and I talked for quite awhile about how stress looks, what you get when you work with La-Dana, and how stress really affects the body. La-Dana shares her steady wealth of knowledge of how the body works, how the stress hormones affect our bodies and decision making, and she shares tangible steps on how we can take back control of these situations, so we can make stress work for us. 

Two important tips La-Dana brought to our conversation are: 

1. See and affirm your work 
2. Focus on on why you are doing something, not the how

She brings all her wisdom, especially as she walks with and through her own motherhood journey as she found her passion in helping other women get control of their stressful days. 

Take a listen and truly learn to Let It Go (like Elsa says). 

Quotables

“Stress builds up one activity at a time.” 

“If you make decision in survival mode, you will make rash decisions.”

Recommended Resources

For more information about Michelle, Balance Shared, events, and projects, please visit www.michellelasley.com. 

Yael Rosenstock Gonzalez teaches about sex, reproductive rights, and sexual pleasure. She wants a world full of sex positive relationships. Living her polyamorous, queer life, and also holding many other identities, she is uniquely poised to hold a safe space for these stories. Here is a little bit of hers. 

Yael wants a world where we don’t have sexual violence. The under-reported number is that one in four or one in five women have experienced sexual assault. After finding a drive to teach on reproductive rights, after having experienced sexual trauma, Yael moved to wanting to help heal people through the trauma and eventually to sexual pleasure.

In this episode, she shares her story about living life as a polyamorous queer cis-gendered woman. Ultimately, she shares a story of how love is the one thing that can tie us all together and help us to break down these barriers we have created. In one vein, her travels to find her polyamorous identity that broke open another vein of holding a safe and accepting space for everyone. 

She has a vision of a world where there is no sexual violence and no shaming, where we all experience a full body-positive experience. Though, we have a lot of work to do. So, sharing and hearing stories different from our own is one way that we get there.

[From Yael’s website under Sex Coaching] “Communication, boundary setting, sex education, and pleasure are rarely talked about in a useful way in schools and parents often don't have the resources they need to have these conversations. As we get older, it feels harder and harder to figure out skills and values that we missed out on as kids.”

[On one thing that can get us to open up about other people’s stories] “Tell me more…”

• See Yael’s work online, https://www.yaelrosenstock.com.
• Check out her book, An Intro-Guide to a Sex Positive You: Lessons, Tales, and Tips, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43607130-an-intro-guide-to-a-sex-positive-you.
• Visit Yael on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/yaelthesexgeek/.
• For publishing and the Diverse Bodies Project visit https://www.instagram.com/yaelthesexgeek/. 
• OPB Think Out Loud, February 2, 2015, “At Home with Two Polyamorous Couples,” https://youtu.be/F9SkZ1TBJNE 

For more information about Michelle, Balance Shared, events, and projects, please visit www.michellelasley.com. 

Introduction to Episode

Michelle Valenzuela learned how manifesting magic worked at a very young age. Learn how she integrates simple magic with every day.

Podcast Episode Summary

Michelle Valenzuela developed her people managing philosophies while working in retail for nearly twenty years. Michelle developed her love of magic from her family. In both, she inherently sees the overlap of showing up with compassion, vulnerability, hard work, and trusting your intuition. She believes that when you focus on what you want, when you bring positive intention, and when you commit to action, you can manifest whatever you want. 

Michelle shares whimsical and serious stories of how she got to where she is. Her wisdom of how to be in touch with yourself and use the tools around you, is just magic. She shares her love of astrology, crystals, and moon energy in this episode. 

Recommended Resources

Visit Michelle on Instagram, Facebook, Snap Chat, and Pinterest. 

Join Michelle and Michelle at our full and new moon circles. Visit us each, every Monday, on both Instagram and Facebook (at our respective pages) to get our weekly guides for Moon Magick.

For more information about Michelle, Balance Shared, events, and projects, please visit www.michellelasley.com. 

Introduction to Episode

Ostara is the Spring Equinox. How can we use the wisdom found during this time to inform our lives of inquiry? Embrace learning to question through Ostara.

Podcast Episode Summary

In this episode, I pontificate about our seasons, again, a Sabbat ritual of my own. This time, I ponder how shifted Christianity is with the seasons and how celebrating death when there is so much birth adds confusion. I hope you get my point that it adds an underlying confusion to the base of our society. And, we have an invitation to co-create something different, something that works for us.

So, take a look at what’s going on in the world around you. What lessons from nature can you observe, embrace, and integrate into your life? 

Also, as the beginning of a new Zodiac New Year, take a moment and consider the intentions you set at the beginning of the year. Are they still valid? Should you revise? Now that we have a new marker of time on new beginnings, embrace this, and revise as necessary.

Recommended Resources

For more information about Michelle, Balance Shared, events, and projects, please visit www.michellelasley.com. 

Introduction to Episode

Compassion for Olga’s daughter led to a path of neurofeedback where choices to practice became a no-brainer choice to healing. 

Podcast Episode Summary

Neurofeedback became the no-brainer choice to healing. In this episode, Olga Ward continues her journey of finding Neurofeedback. Olga developed a deeper sense of compassion and understanding when helping her adoptive daughter through her own challenges, big behaviors, and difficult days. The ideal “peaceful home” was out of reach because of the underlying trauma her daughter, and even she herself, was trying to work through. 

After endless therapy, medication, and other modalities, Olga was introduced to Neurofeedback from the therapist she was working with at the time. This was the single most effective tool in helping Olga move through her own stuck patterns. She was so overwhelmed at how effective it worked, she got her whole family to try it. Her son was able to get support with his anxiety. And, her daughter received immeasurable support in working through her startle responses and working towards less reactive and more calm method of showing up. Olga was so impressed with the results, she decided to pivot her career, leveraging her previous education background and offer Neurofeedback. 

Results vary where literature will advise that it takes about 20 sessions for results to be noticeable. Olga has found that many of her clients see a level of results within three sessions. When nothing else has worked, Neurofeedback could be a tool to help guide the brain to healthier pathways. For Olga, it was a no-brainer.

Olga has been practicing neurofeedback now for a few years. If nothing else has worked in your road to recovery from anything from insomnia to anxiety to trauma (and more), she would like to invite you to give neurofeedback a try.

Recommended Resources

Visit Beaverton Neurofeedback at https://www.beavertonneurofeedback.com. 

For more information about Michelle, Balance Shared, events, and projects, please visit www.michellelasley.com. 

Introduction to Episode

Olga Ward discovered the cost of trauma while healing her adopted daughter and herself. In this episode, we discuss how she discovered her path to healing.

Podcast Episode Summary

Olga Ward joins me for two episodes where we dig into her path to finding neurofeedback as a healing modality when faced with trauma, and through this, discuss the cost of trauma.

Olga’s journey to neurofeedback comes through the story of her daughter’s adoption path. Soon after Olga and her family adopted their daughter, they began to realize the cost of trauma and the hidden effects it had on her daughter’s well-being and eventually the whole family.

Eventually, Olga’s journey to heal herself, realizing her own relationship to and the cost of trauma in her life, led her to find healing with neurofeedback. This was, later, the only tool (of so many tried) that worked to help connect her daughter to her own path of healing. Olga was so thankful for this modality that she began using it and sharing her experience with many others. Next week, we’ll dive into neurofeedback and how it can really help. 

This week’s episode focused on getting out of the shame spiral, finding community that can understand your path, and finding balance in all the chaos life can deliver. 

Some thoughts that summarized that stage in Olga’s life include: 

“I was a lot stronger than I thought I was."

“I had my own trauma.”

“My desire to find a solution.”

Olga is a resilient mother who truly wants the best for her family. She now takes that and teaches others how to connect to different ways of healing so they can find peace in their lives too. Stay tuned for next week when we dive more into neurofeedback. 

Recommended Resources

Visit Beaverton Neurofeedback at https://www.beavertonneurofeedback.com. 

For more information about Michelle, Balance Shared, events, and projects, please visit www.michellelasley.com. 

Introduction to Episode

Brad Long works to inspire people in realizing financial independence. He wagers that if more people were realizing financial independence we’d have happier more contented people giving back.

Podcast Episode Summary

I started this episode with some wisdom from a communication professor I had at Michigan State University. He said before any couple gets married, they should talk about four things, which are sex, religion, family, and money. Brad Long, a financial coach, came on to talk about the latter.

Brad has a mission to teach the world to 

1. organize their finances, 
2. get on a written budget, 
3. get out of debt, and 
4. move on to financial independence.

We discussed how 78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and it doesn’t matter their paycheck size. 

Brad wants more people realizing financial independence, which will positively affect their happiness and contentment and give them space to give more. He works to support one person, one family at a time. When he works with clients, he is looking for progress, not perfection. He teaches his clients that every penny has a job. 

Quotables

“We as a culture have overextended ourselves.”

“Everything in our society has become so luxurious. It's no longer keeping up with the Jones’. It’s now keeping up with hyper luxury.”

Quoting Paula Pant, “You can afford anything, but you can’t afford everything.” 

A question not asked enough, “Can I afford it?”

“What would it feel like if you knew you were good [with spending to your budget]?”

Recommended Resources

Stats on Money

• https://news.gallup.com/poll/308936/personal-finances-future-concerning-present.aspx
• https://www.debt.com/statistics/ 
• https://www.marketwatch.com/story/only-3-in-10-americans-are-considered-financially-healthy-2018-11-01

Juliet Schor, The Overspent American

• YouTube Documentary: https://youtu.be/YdaQnGgWoPg
• Book: https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-overspent-american-why-we-want-what-we-dont-need_juliet-b-schor/250982/item/758616/?mkwid=%7cdc&pcrid=450665973549&pkw=&pmt=&slid=&plc=&pgrid=110661787651&ptaid=pla-1121313271112&gclid=CjwKCAiAyc2BBhAaEiwA44-wW7JjLlNEcq7Q1eeJePJReQ0zgZ-HxkzcxBYd87kaYX4CwxrvIbxlvBoCROUQAvD_BwE#idiq=758616&edition=2337415 

Facebook Live with Brad: https://business.facebook.com/balanceshared/videos/303328487734196/ 

The Complete Financial Guide for Young Couples, by Larry Burkett: https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/complete-financial-guide-for-young-couples-a-lifetime-approach-to-spending-saving-and-investing_larry-burkett/275874/#edition=2309371&idiq=421776 

• See Brad’s work at zerodebtcoach.com. 
• Find Brad on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/zerodebtcoaching/. 
• And, check out his YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsdZE9tynhAgGd9cl_FE95A 

For more information about Michelle, Balance Shared, events, and projects, please visit www.michellelasley.com.